Experts refute Wall Street Journal editorial on START

Bloggers, commentators and Ploughshares Fund grantees pounced on a highly inaccurate and misleading editorial in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal questioning the safety of reducing nuclear arsenals in the U.S.  "The new START Treaty cutting U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, set to be concluded later this month, enjoys broad, bipartisan support from national security experts in the U.S. and from America's friends and allies around the world - but you'd never know that by reading the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal," writes Heather Hurlburt from the National Security Network in the Huffington Post.  She points to no fewer than four false assertions about the state of the U.S. nuclear deterrent in the editorial. Max Bergmann from The Wonk Room calls the editorial “the right wing’s main push back” against the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which is currently being negotiated with Russia.  He notes that it cites the Perry-Schlesinger commission report to assert that the nuclear arsenal is deteriorating, even though the Commission’s report never makes this point.  The Arms Control Association (ACA), also responded to the claims of the Wall Street Journal editorial, referring to a recent fact sheet it produced on U.S. Nuclear Modernization Programs.  "A robust program to refurbish U.S. nuclear warheads and modernize strategic delivery systems is well underway," said ACA Executive Director Daryl Kimball. "It's simply a myth that the United States is not modernizing its arsenal."   

 
Wonk Room, Arms Control Association